May must be brave enough not to meddle

From energy to technology, the failure of past industrial strategies shows that we should leave it to the entrepreneurs

Theresa May’s “modern industrial strategy”, launched today, must avoid the ignominious fate of its predecessors. One by one they failed. Diagnosis of Britain’s problems is not difficult; treatment is harder. How can a government close the productivity gap, improve our low investment levels, heal the north-south divide, overcome our habitual pattern of inventing but not exploiting new ideas, and create an economy that “works for everyone”?

I do not presume to know all the answers, but I trust that the prime minister and Greg Clark, her business secretary, have begun by learning a lesson from the history of industrial strategies, Labour and Conservative: top-down solutions will not work; bottom-up ones might.

Subsidising solar panels has meant robbing the poor to feed the richGetty Images

Clement Attlee’s government of 1945 nationalised the commanding heights of the economy. The result…